5 ms·

I've read multiple times that there've been discussions in a few places around the world to ban cats, or certain breeding of cats to save wildlife, or birds spe

by cloths 3y ago

I've read multiple times that there've been discussions in a few places around the world to ban cats, or certain breeding of cats to save wildlife, or birds specifically. But I haven't heard any law become real, anyone?

watwut 3y ago
Cats roamed free for hundreds and hundreds years now. It is not like their presence was a new change.
- carstenhag 3y ago
  They used to only be outside, and were sometimes fed when they lived on a farm. Nowadays pretty much all roaming ones still get fed at home.
- dano 3y ago
  A primary difference is that cats were introduced into environments as a non-native species and have become the apex predator. This is especially true in New Zealand and Australia. Unlike native carnivorous mammals such as the Tasmanian Devil, Quall's, and Bandicoots, cats hunt for food and sport rather than act as scavengers. Cats in Tasmania have no natural predators other than humans. I've had many cats for pets and yet in an unbalanced environment short of predators, they really can cause tremendous damage. Short of an all out ban, keeping them indoors or in a catery or controlled in some manner seems reasonable.
  - wtflick 3y ago
    This whole argument of 'non-native' irks me, with animals and plants. Most everything was non-native at some point. I mean of course it depends on (potentially huge) timelines but at some point in the past land bridges between continents didn't exist and then existed and then didn't exist. At some point some seed got lucky enough to be carried across a sea either by an animal or just wind. I know this is a naive point of view, but nature adapts pretty well to this, it's kinda _what it does_, even if in the short-term and from a human lens it causes damage. What does damage mean exactly.. a drop in population of some particular species or plant that we are used to having in an area. Are we sure that's damage and not just normal evolution of ecosystems? I certainly prefer that to happen than have local governments pass laws saying cats must be kept inside, lest they upset the environment that us humans are used to.
    - solardev 3y ago
      I dunno why you were flagged. It's a totally valid question IMO, and I asked it a lot in school too (environmental science undergrad). To me, the difference is the RATE of change and expansion. Nature and evolution can pretty easily deal with small changes in small areas happening over hundreds or thousands of years, which was normal before human population explosions. But when that change happens across multiple human settlements (large areas), quickly (industrialization and the green revolution in just a few decades), and at a huge scale (not just cats but climate change and deforestation and pollution all leading to habitat loss), it is very very hard for other species to cope. If a few individual wildcats crossed a land bridge, sure, they'll have a field day as they gorge on unsuspecting prey. They'll do well and reproduce, and their kittens will eat more prey. But eventually there are more wildcats than prey, a harsh winter or drought comes along, and a bunch of kittens die and the prey have a chance to recover over the next few years. It reaches a dynamic equilibrium. That's different than when humans settle a new place and suddenly introduce hordes of rats and start breeding pet cats, at numbers far above what the prey population can sustain (because we feed them pet food). The unwanted ones become feral and enter the system at a rate higher than they would've through normal migration, and then we keep breeding more and more of them with an outside input (more pet food). Pretty quickly the feral cats will kill off a lot of the unsuspecting prey (the dumber, more exotic birds, often) and leave a bunch of human-adopted species like rats and corvids and squirrels that can coexist with cats, often having immigrated with the humans for hundreds of years. So you end up swapping the local wildlife for the introduced ones in just a decade or two, way faster than the dozens or hundreds of years it usually takes. On islands or where settlements and road networks form unnatural barriers, this is especially bad because the escaping prey have nowhere to run to, being isolated to smaller non-contiguos pockets that can individually be trapped until the whole species is extinct or at least extricated (locally extinct). Of course there are gray areas. The Hawaiian Islands, for example, are a mix of species that ended up there naturally, some a long time ago, some more recently. They have different times of introduction, just like humans do. But because it's a young island chain (in geologic time), its whole timeline is compressed and the species there have different, eh, degrees of "native"-ness, I guess. And among the various introduced species, not all of them are considered invasive. https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/ https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/ Anyway, it's not an exactly cutoff date or algorithmic formula for determining nativeness. It's just a case by case judgment call based on the relative time of introduction compared to the ecosystem age, and also the effects of the introduced species on other preexisting ones. It's a human judgment call subject to errors, like any others, but still a useful consideration in ecology. Sorry for the long post...
- Euphorbium 3y ago
  Exactly. All of the species have adapted long ago. I let out my cats, they hunt lots and lots of mice and like less than 1% of prey is birds.
  - bartonfink 3y ago
    [flagged]
- nicklecompte 3y ago
  Cats typically roamed free in Eurasia and Africa, where small wildcats were common millions of years before humans ever showed up. This means large populations of feral/semi-domestic cats aren't as disruptive to the ecosystem: birds and rodents have already evolved specifically in response to predation from small cats. This is not true in Oceania, and only barely true in the Americas: bobcats really aren't the same thing as small cats since they are much more widely dispersed. (Especially feral domestic cats, which mostly kill for fun, and live in big dense colonies.)
- solardev 3y ago
  Only in limited areas, though, and in limited numbers. Introducing feral cats to new places in numbers supported by human breeding is totally different than a natural slow extension of their range. Wildcats that evolved in an ecosystem have their place within it, at numbers supported by the prey population there that co-evolved with them. When humans suddenly introduce housecats to a new environment where the prey never had the chance to co-evolve, the overnight influx (in evolutionary time) will rapidly decrease the prey populations. Some birds on long established migratory paths are especially vulnerable too, since they have limited options for resting grounds along the way.
recursive 3y ago
Seems very unlikely to happen. People like their cats.
- knodi123 3y ago
  mandatory spay/neuter with steep/progressive fines, plus ban free-roaming cats? that's a lot more achievable, and nearly as good.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Then all we need is a cat detector van and we’re good to go.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - User23 3y ago
    How exactly do you expect to enforce the ban on feral cats? Having giant cat killing operations? Because spay and neuter isn’t going to cut it. Even if it didn’t just result in selecting for not getting caught, there would still be 10-15 years of depredation while you wait for the die out.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
      First of all they said free-roaming cats, not feral cats. You can't ban feral cats any more than you can ban rats or trees. And you're excluding the middle too. It's not as though any policy which isn't perfectly and totally enforced is completely ineffectual. And it's also not the case that policies that don't solve a problem completely should be discarded as pointless. In the end, to have any solution at all, you need something that a) works to some extent and b) can be agreed on by enough people to actually end up being executed. Far too often the discussion gets completely bogged down in a where a has to be accomplished utterly and completely or we shouldn't bother at all. But the only thing that's pointless is having the discussion that way, because the world just doesn't work like that.
greazy 3y ago
Unfortunately, no me neither. I think this issue extends beyond cats, it's the uncontrolled breeding of animals, which imo leads to all sorts of abuse. I find it amazing that anyone can decide I'm going to buy a breeding pair of cats with the end goal of making money. We need to phase out cats and dogs completely. This saddens me deeply because I love my dog but the damage these animals do to the environment is so large I don't think I can truly fathom. We can do this slowly, first pets needs to be desexed. For cats there's no exception. For dogs the exception would be breeding working dogs, or therapy/guide dogs. With cats they must be kept in doors at all times. These laws should extend to larger animals like horses. In Australia we have a huge problem with horses and camels. But the public do not support culls of horses, even if it's for their own benefit (eg to stop them from starving in winter). But the horse racing industry is huge here, they've got clout and political pressure. Uncontrolled breeding of animals for human enjoyment is amoral. Animal companionship is of course the exception but this comes with issues.
- thousand_nights 3y ago
  is this satire?
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    Pretty sure it’s just bad logic informed by propaganda.
    - greazy 3y ago
      Excuse me what propaganda? This is informed opinion.
      - nuxi 3y ago
        If one was to replace "cats/dogs/animals/horses" in your statements with "humans", one could get another informed opinion. A bit cynical perhaps, but informed nonetheless.
williamcotton 3y ago
I think at least one small town in New Zealand has banned domestic cats specifically because of the impact on flightless birds.
- dj_gitmo 3y ago
  Cats also devour New Zealand’s indigenous ground bats. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_lesser_short-tailed_bat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_lesser_short-tai... > The bat roosts are very vulnerable, as they contain more potential prey within a single area. If these roosts were found by a predator, they could experience mass mortality events; in one incident, 102 lesser short-tailed bat deaths were caused by a single house cat in central North Island.
throwaway87651 3y ago
Canberra requires cats born from 1 July 2022 to be kept indoors. https://www.cityservices.act.gov.au/pets-and-wildlife/domestic-animals/cats/cat-containment https://www.cityservices.act.gov.au/pets-and-wildlife/domest...
throwaway290 3y ago
Many countries have been doing it for years. Seen a cat with a clipped ear? Those were caught and neutered to control cat population.

by cloths 3y ago

watwut 3y ago

Cats roamed free for hundreds and hundreds years now. It is not like their presence was a new change.

carstenhag 3y ago
They used to only be outside, and were sometimes fed when they lived on a farm. Nowadays pretty much all roaming ones still get fed at home.
dano 3y ago
A primary difference is that cats were introduced into environments as a non-native species and have become the apex predator. This is especially true in New Zealand and Australia. Unlike native carnivorous mammals such as the Tasmanian Devil, Quall's, and Bandicoots, cats hunt for food and sport rather than act as scavengers. Cats in Tasmania have no natural predators other than humans. I've had many cats for pets and yet in an unbalanced environment short of predators, they really can cause tremendous damage. Short of an all out ban, keeping them indoors or in a catery or controlled in some manner seems reasonable.
- wtflick 3y ago
  This whole argument of 'non-native' irks me, with animals and plants. Most everything was non-native at some point. I mean of course it depends on (potentially huge) timelines but at some point in the past land bridges between continents didn't exist and then existed and then didn't exist. At some point some seed got lucky enough to be carried across a sea either by an animal or just wind. I know this is a naive point of view, but nature adapts pretty well to this, it's kinda _what it does_, even if in the short-term and from a human lens it causes damage. What does damage mean exactly.. a drop in population of some particular species or plant that we are used to having in an area. Are we sure that's damage and not just normal evolution of ecosystems? I certainly prefer that to happen than have local governments pass laws saying cats must be kept inside, lest they upset the environment that us humans are used to.
  - solardev 3y ago
    I dunno why you were flagged. It's a totally valid question IMO, and I asked it a lot in school too (environmental science undergrad). To me, the difference is the RATE of change and expansion. Nature and evolution can pretty easily deal with small changes in small areas happening over hundreds or thousands of years, which was normal before human population explosions. But when that change happens across multiple human settlements (large areas), quickly (industrialization and the green revolution in just a few decades), and at a huge scale (not just cats but climate change and deforestation and pollution all leading to habitat loss), it is very very hard for other species to cope. If a few individual wildcats crossed a land bridge, sure, they'll have a field day as they gorge on unsuspecting prey. They'll do well and reproduce, and their kittens will eat more prey. But eventually there are more wildcats than prey, a harsh winter or drought comes along, and a bunch of kittens die and the prey have a chance to recover over the next few years. It reaches a dynamic equilibrium. That's different than when humans settle a new place and suddenly introduce hordes of rats and start breeding pet cats, at numbers far above what the prey population can sustain (because we feed them pet food). The unwanted ones become feral and enter the system at a rate higher than they would've through normal migration, and then we keep breeding more and more of them with an outside input (more pet food). Pretty quickly the feral cats will kill off a lot of the unsuspecting prey (the dumber, more exotic birds, often) and leave a bunch of human-adopted species like rats and corvids and squirrels that can coexist with cats, often having immigrated with the humans for hundreds of years. So you end up swapping the local wildlife for the introduced ones in just a decade or two, way faster than the dozens or hundreds of years it usually takes. On islands or where settlements and road networks form unnatural barriers, this is especially bad because the escaping prey have nowhere to run to, being isolated to smaller non-contiguos pockets that can individually be trapped until the whole species is extinct or at least extricated (locally extinct). Of course there are gray areas. The Hawaiian Islands, for example, are a mix of species that ended up there naturally, some a long time ago, some more recently. They have different times of introduction, just like humans do. But because it's a young island chain (in geologic time), its whole timeline is compressed and the species there have different, eh, degrees of "native"-ness, I guess. And among the various introduced species, not all of them are considered invasive. https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/ https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/ Anyway, it's not an exactly cutoff date or algorithmic formula for determining nativeness. It's just a case by case judgment call based on the relative time of introduction compared to the ecosystem age, and also the effects of the introduced species on other preexisting ones. It's a human judgment call subject to errors, like any others, but still a useful consideration in ecology. Sorry for the long post...
Euphorbium 3y ago
Exactly. All of the species have adapted long ago. I let out my cats, they hunt lots and lots of mice and like less than 1% of prey is birds.
- bartonfink 3y ago
  [flagged]
nicklecompte 3y ago
Cats typically roamed free in Eurasia and Africa, where small wildcats were common millions of years before humans ever showed up. This means large populations of feral/semi-domestic cats aren't as disruptive to the ecosystem: birds and rodents have already evolved specifically in response to predation from small cats. This is not true in Oceania, and only barely true in the Americas: bobcats really aren't the same thing as small cats since they are much more widely dispersed. (Especially feral domestic cats, which mostly kill for fun, and live in big dense colonies.)
solardev 3y ago
Only in limited areas, though, and in limited numbers. Introducing feral cats to new places in numbers supported by human breeding is totally different than a natural slow extension of their range. Wildcats that evolved in an ecosystem have their place within it, at numbers supported by the prey population there that co-evolved with them. When humans suddenly introduce housecats to a new environment where the prey never had the chance to co-evolve, the overnight influx (in evolutionary time) will rapidly decrease the prey populations. Some birds on long established migratory paths are especially vulnerable too, since they have limited options for resting grounds along the way.

recursive 3y ago

Seems very unlikely to happen. People like their cats.

knodi123 3y ago
mandatory spay/neuter with steep/progressive fines, plus ban free-roaming cats? that's a lot more achievable, and nearly as good.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Then all we need is a cat detector van and we’re good to go.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- User23 3y ago
  How exactly do you expect to enforce the ban on feral cats? Having giant cat killing operations? Because spay and neuter isn’t going to cut it. Even if it didn’t just result in selecting for not getting caught, there would still be 10-15 years of depredation while you wait for the die out.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    First of all they said free-roaming cats, not feral cats. You can't ban feral cats any more than you can ban rats or trees. And you're excluding the middle too. It's not as though any policy which isn't perfectly and totally enforced is completely ineffectual. And it's also not the case that policies that don't solve a problem completely should be discarded as pointless. In the end, to have any solution at all, you need something that a) works to some extent and b) can be agreed on by enough people to actually end up being executed. Far too often the discussion gets completely bogged down in a where a has to be accomplished utterly and completely or we shouldn't bother at all. But the only thing that's pointless is having the discussion that way, because the world just doesn't work like that.

greazy 3y ago

Unfortunately, no me neither. I think this issue extends beyond cats, it's the uncontrolled breeding of animals, which imo leads to all sorts of abuse. I find it amazing that anyone can decide I'm going to buy a breeding pair of cats with the end goal of making money. We need to phase out cats and dogs completely. This saddens me deeply because I love my dog but the damage these animals do to the environment is so large I don't think I can truly fathom. We can do this slowly, first pets needs to be desexed. For cats there's no exception. For dogs the exception would be breeding working dogs, or therapy/guide dogs. With cats they must be kept in doors at all times. These laws should extend to larger animals like horses. In Australia we have a huge problem with horses and camels. But the public do not support culls of horses, even if it's for their own benefit (eg to stop them from starving in winter). But the horse racing industry is huge here, they've got clout and political pressure. Uncontrolled breeding of animals for human enjoyment is amoral. Animal companionship is of course the exception but this comes with issues.

thousand_nights 3y ago
is this satire?
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  Pretty sure it’s just bad logic informed by propaganda.
  - greazy 3y ago
    Excuse me what propaganda? This is informed opinion.
    - nuxi 3y ago
      If one was to replace "cats/dogs/animals/horses" in your statements with "humans", one could get another informed opinion. A bit cynical perhaps, but informed nonetheless.

williamcotton 3y ago

I think at least one small town in New Zealand has banned domestic cats specifically because of the impact on flightless birds.

dj_gitmo 3y ago
Cats also devour New Zealand’s indigenous ground bats. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_lesser_short-tailed_bat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_lesser_short-tai... > The bat roosts are very vulnerable, as they contain more potential prey within a single area. If these roosts were found by a predator, they could experience mass mortality events; in one incident, 102 lesser short-tailed bat deaths were caused by a single house cat in central North Island.

throwaway87651 3y ago

Canberra requires cats born from 1 July 2022 to be kept indoors. https://www.cityservices.act.gov.au/pets-and-wildlife/domestic-animals/cats/cat-containment https://www.cityservices.act.gov.au/pets-and-wildlife/domest...

throwaway290 3y ago

Many countries have been doing it for years. Seen a cat with a clipped ear? Those were caught and neutered to control cat population.